Cores, Corals, and CO2

At the risk of being branded a heretic, there are a few things about the global warming issue that bother me. First, any scientific endeavor that is molded by preconceived notions, be they public opinion, political favor, faith, or heritage must be viewed with a suspicious eye by any respectable scientist. When I see people proudly flying the anti-creationism banner next to the global warming banner, I wonder if they really know or even care about the reasoning and science behind either.

Let’s start with the coral reefs and CO2:
Carbon dioxide dissolved in water creates carbonic acid, which dissolves the calcium carbonate bodies of coral. Cooler water can contain a higher percentage of CO2 than warmer water, which is why corals do not generally live very deeply under water. As the oceans warm (presumably from global warming), it actually creates a more favorable environment for the precipitation of calcium carbonate shells and structures. It should be noted however, that warmer waters can also cause the death of zooxanthellae (a symbiotic algae that live in corals, providing them with nutrients and color) which in turn causes the “bleaching” of coral reefs. These algae are present in many, though not all corals, and the ability of different coral species to adapt to environments that are not favorable to the algae is largely unknown.
The point: Water temperature is just one of many many factors (current, turbidity, clarity, depth, dissolved gas, etc) that affects coral growth.

Now the ice cores:
It has been published over and over that current atmospheric CO2 levels are higher than they have been in the last 400,000 years. This is based on the Vostok ice core data, available here. The aspiring scientist will notice that the most recent CO2 concentration data begins at roughly 2000 years ago. This means that there is no ice core data for last year, or the last decade, or the last hundred years. The famous hockey-stick graph uses direct atmospheric sampling data from one location to “fill in” the missing data from another location and medium and then highlights the discrepancy. This is a violation of the scientific method and just poor laboratory procedure. But hey, an orange looks enough like an apple anyhow, right? Additionally, when the data is plotted, two things become evident:
1) CO2 concentration correlates very well with changes in temperature, indicating that there is definitely a relationship between the two (though not necessarily as simple as we would like to think.)
2) There are four events in the data that clearly show a rapid rise of atmospheric CO2 and temperature followed by a more gradual decline of the same. For those not in the know, that’s the telltale sign of a negative feedback system. Said another way, long before humans started burning coal or driving cars, the Earth experienced similar episodes of global climate change, and each time it “recovered”.

The Earth System clearly includes an incredibly complex system of feedback and compensation mechanisms, and it is nothing more than an a display of hubris and arrogance for one individual or entity to claim an absolute understanding of all of the processes… or to claim that “the debate is over.”